Spring School 2026 Recap
On February 24–26, the DSF Spring School took place at the Techcampus of Heilbronn University. The event brought together more than 20 participants from across Germany. Over three days, members of the DSF community collaborated on projects, explored use cases, and exchanged knowledge related to the Data Sharing Framework (DSF) and its ecosystem.
As in previous editions, the event provided participants with the freedom to work on their own DSF related projects and implementations. Additionally, a Process Plugin tutorial was offered for participants interested in developing their own DSF process plugins. Throughout the event, members of the DSF team held individual sessions to support participants with technical questions or specific use cases.
Day 1 – Tuesday, February 24
The first day began with a brief introduction into the DSF and the DSF community. After these short presentations, participants were free to start working on their own projects or with the Process Plugin tutorial. In the evening, participants gathered for dinner at Bauart at the Parkhotel in Heilbronn, providing an opportunity to socialize and connect.
Day 2 – Wednesday, February 25
On Wednesday, the participants continued working on their projects or progressed further with the plugin tutorial. In parallel seminar sessions, attendees could dive deeper into technical topics such as the DSF Linter Tool and DSF API v2. Additionally, BPMN process modeling was discussed in more detail to strengthening their understanding how to model a DSF process for their individual use cases.
In the afternoon, our community members Stefan Sigle and Mathias Rühle held community talks:
- “Technical Service Provider Role – Providing AI Services in the OMI Project” by Stefan
- “Version-to-Version Plugin Compatibility” by Mathias
The day concluded with the traditional Hackend Event with Pizza and Games Night, featuring plenty of snacks, food, and drinks.
Day 3 – Thursday, February 26
The final day began with an insightful talk titled “Open Source at Scale: Security, Governance and Supply Chain Reality in the Apache Software Foundation”, presented by Richard Zowalla. Since the DSF community is strongly rooted in open-source software, the talk provided valuable insights into how other large open-source communities operate.
As the Spring School entered its final phase, participants continued working on their projects until the afternoon. Towards the end of the event, the community gathered to share their experiences, impressions, and prototypes developed during the Spring School.
Presentation of Experiences and Highlights
Several prototypes and technical demonstrations were presented, including:
- Integration of FHIR Shorthand (FSH) into the DSF Process Plugin Tutorial
- Practical experiences migrating from DSF API v1 to API v2
- A DSF Process Plugin Generator for quickly setting up new plugin projects
- A preview of the DSF Public Monitor, an upcoming monitoring solution for DSF Networks
- Integration of Prometheus and Grafana for monitoring DSF metrics
- The use of GitHub Actions to automate Docker image builds and enable parallel build pipelines for the DSF
Participants also shared their experiences from the tutorial sessions, discussed their first implementations and shared their connections with the DSF Community.
The Spring School once again demonstrated the value of collaborative development and knowledge exchange within the DSF community. The event brought together both new and experienced members and provided an environment for experimenting with new ideas, tools, and implementations.
We would like to thank all participants for their contributions and engagement. As in previous years, attendees received DSF-themed goodies as a small token of appreciation.